City Scraps Water-Saving Program After Usage Drops : Conservation: Use by residents plummets by 28%. Neighboring cities with similar reductions may soon ease or cut restrictions as well.

Citing strong conservation by residents and businesses, the Lakewood City Council has repealed the city’s mandatory water conservation program, which levied surcharges to prod consumers into saving water.

Tuesday night’s council action took effect immediately, making Lakewood the first city in the Southeast/Long Beach area to pull back from a mandatory conservation program.

Lakewood enacted its mandatory program last March. Since then, residents and businesses served by the municipal water system have reduced their water use by 28% from the same period in 1990, said Jim Glancy, Lakewood’s water superintendent.

Under the mandatory program, customers were charged as much as 2 1/2 times the normal rate for water they used in excess of city-imposed limits. The program also carried penalties as high as $75 for wasteful water practices, such as watering down driveways, although the city ended up only issuing warnings, an official said.

Those sanctions were repealed immediately.

“We feel a need to reward people for their fantastic compliance,” Glancy said. “We project that our people will maintain a good level of conservation, and we will not have to fall back into a mandatory phase.”

Municipal and independent water systems supplying at least 20 cities in the area have imposed mandatory conservation programs to curb water consumption during the drought, which has entered its sixth year.

Those programs place limits on water use, prohibit wasteful practices, and punish violators with surcharges and fines.

Other municipal and independent water companies are almost certain to follow Lakewood’s lead in the near future. Last week, Long Beach water officials considered easing the city’s mandatory conservation program but decided to study the issue further. Long Beach water customers have reduced usage by about 20% in recent months, an official said.

A regional water official gave cautious approval to easing conservation practices.

“The bottom line is performance. It’s hard to argue that they shouldn’t relax (the conservation program) because they have done such a good job,” said Richard Atwater, general manager of the Central Basin Municipal Water District. “But we don’t know if we’re going to have a good wet winter or not.”

The Central Basin District sells water imported by the giant Metropolitan Water District to most cities and water companies in the area. Those municipal and independent water companies also pump water from a local underground basin, or aquifer, which is relatively full.

It was the MWD that spurred local cities to enact mandatory conservation programs earlier this year.

The MWD, which imports water from Northern California and the Colorado River, has been faced with dwindling supplies because of the drought. As a result, the MWD has required its water-agency customers to reduce demand for imported water by at least 20%--or pay hefty surcharges.

In a normal year, Lakewood buys about 10% of its water from the MWD and pumps the rest from wells. But the conservation effort in Lakewood has enabled the municipal Water Department to stop buying water from the MWD altogether.

Lakewood’s mandatory conservation program allocated 337 gallons per day to single-family homes. If residents exceeded that limit, they were charged the normal rate plus a surcharge ranging from 25% to 125% for the excess water.

Similar restrictions and penalties were applied to apartment building owners, business and industry. The Lakewood Water Department serves about 58,000 residents and more than 1,000 business and industrial customers.

The city has collected $81,000 in surcharges since the program went into effect March 1, said Nancy Hicks, Lakewood’s director of finance. That income will help offset revenue lost from reduced water sales, she said.

Under the new voluntary conservation program, only the most excessive water users will pay a surcharge. For single-family homes, that means using more than 1,346 gallons a day, which is four times the limit under the mandatory program.

Citations for hosing down driveways and other wasteful water practices have been virtually eliminated as well, Glancy said.

Lakewood will continue to distribute water-conservation kits that include low-flow devices for showers and faucets, an official said. The city has distributed about 3,000 of the free and low-cost kits so far.

“The feeling is that we can maintain a good level of conservation. Maybe it won’t be double-digit but people will still carry on some of the (conservation) habits. . . .” Glancy said. “The hardware changes, the shower heads . . . will be there for years.”